Friday, March 30, 2007

Ensuring Indulgence In Your Luxury Villa Holidays

Advancing into a new level of luxury, holiday makers has been introduced to private villas, a rather new alternative to luxury holiday accommodation previously served by five-starred resorts. Private villas offer the sixth star to the meaning of luxurious holiday accommodation, total privacy. When resort hotels only offer only the bedroom and sometimes the balcony at your private disposal, private villas offer the whole house, including staffs, dedicated for you.

Most private villas are also private holiday home of the owners which they only use a few weeks every years, leaving most of the time remain unused. Many of them are remotely managed by the owners from abroad whilst some are managed by professional property management companies. Of course, in both cases their ability to provide ultimate holiday experience during your stay could not be as credible as well-known five-starred brands like Sheraton, Hyatt, Intercontinental, Westin, and others alike.

Ensuring that you are getting the sixth star without compromising the other five – which are guaranteed by resort hotel chains – can be a challenge. Whilst you can start your holiday plan by searching for private villas available for holiday rental on the internet, ensuring that the quality of both the villa and its services is not as easy as typing "private villa rental" on Google.

A few weeks back a group of young families from Singapore rented a luxurious five bedrooms villa close to the famous Seminyak beach in Bali. After convincing communication and looking into the pictures they were finally assured that the villa was exactly the one they want. Their feeling got even stronger at the day they arrive. An air-conditioned bus awaited them at the airport to transfer them to the villa. They found the villa amazing, wide yard for the kids to play on, large sparkling swimming pool, wide pool-deck, and most of all, romantic bedrooms with lace mosquito nets for the parents and bedroom with multiple trundle beds with TV, DVD player, and even a game console for the kids.

Nightmare started when they went into shower late at night after dinner at one of the island's most famous beachfront fine dining restaurant. The hot water does not work. The annoyance increase even more as when reported to the staff, they had to wait until the villa manager came the next morning before they can have it fixed.

After the hot water installation fixed they thought everything would be doing all right. Unfortunately they were wrong. After enjoying the first splash of the hot water and applied some soap, the water suddenly stopped. The story went over again. They had to wait until the manager came the next day to get it fixed. You may imagine how they flushed the soap from their body and shampoo from their hair.

Of course, for nearly a thousand Dollars a night, those annoyances should have never happened. The villa management should know how to prevent these, and manage an immediate fix if they still arise. But blaming the villa staff, the villa manager, the management company running the villa, or even the owner would not wipe the bad experience from your holiday memory.

How do you prevent this from happening? One way you can do is by renting it through a professional rental agency. Whilst your first encounter can be through the internet, you should look at the website, its sleekness, information it provides, the way it composed, these all reflect their professionalism in their business. Furthermore, don't just immediately book one. Try to communicate with their representative to get a personal feeling if they really do care about your indulgence more than your money. More than just read testimonials on the website, ask them to give you contact of their previous guest having experience in both dealing with them and staying in certain villa. In most of the cases, if they had good holiday experience, they will be excited to tell you.

Never think that dealing through agents will cost you more money. You will get the same price even if you contact the owners directly as they are bound in a business agreement with rental agents. Agents do not charge you for their services. Owners pay them the commission out of the price they set. In fact, you have to be careful if an owner allows you to pay less by booking direct as it indicates that the villa is not professionally operated. You can shop around the net to find a credible rental agent. If you are planning your holiday in Bali, you may want to start with Villa Rental Bali